September 29, 2008	Monday	Ramazan 28, 1429

BAGHDAD, Sept 28: At least 29 people were killed in a spate of bombings in Baghdad on Sunday, including three attacks which struck as Iraqis marked the end of the daily Ramadan fast, security officials said.

A bomb in a minibus parked near a mosque in Baghdad’s Shurta neighbourhood killed 12 people and wounded 35 others, the officials said, while a second car bombing killed one person and wounded another in Hai al-Amil.

Both attacks took place in the western Baghdad neighbourhoods just minutes before the end of the daily Ramadan dawn-to-dusk fast.

A medic at Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital confirmed receiving bodies of at least six victims.

A third attack involving a car bomb and a roadside bomb in the central Karrada district killed 15 people and wounded 50, the officials said, adding the dead included three policemen and three women.

Earlier, one person was killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in the capital’s once upscale western district of Mansur, security officials said.

The bombings on Sunday come two days after US commander for Baghdad Major General Jeffery Hammond said the city had so far witnessed the quietest Ramadan in three years but added that the past few days had seen a spike in attacks.

He said the first 21 days of Ramadan saw 60 attacks in Baghdad compared with 600 in 2007 and 800 in 2006 — the year when sectarian violence erupted across Iraq.

Violence then was deadliest in the capital. However, Hammond said Baghdad was currently witnessing “4.2 attacks per day, 89 per cent less than in 2006 and 83 (percent) less than in 2007.” Hammond noted that there had been a spike in violence over the past few days as is the case during Ramadan, but said this was not reversing the overall downward trend.“I don’t think it’s a sectarian issue, I see it as criminality, and some kind of efforts by Al Qaeda to disrupt the process. I attribute it to the Ramadan, and also low level Al Qaeda attempts,” he said.

Also on Sunday a Kurdish mayor of a northern Iraqi town was wounded in a roadside bombing in Saadiyah near the Kurdish-dominated city of Khanaqin, along with six of his guards, police said.—AFP